Next story in Space

Sunday (June 16) marks the 50th anniversary of Soviet cosmonaut
Valentina Tereshkova's landmark 1963 flight, which launched her
into history as the
first woman to fly to space — only two years after Yuri
Gagarin performed the first spaceflight ever in 1961. Tereshkova
circled the Earth 48 times during her time as the pilot onboard
the Vostok 6 spacecraft.

"There have been so many boundaries broken," said Cathy Lewis,
curator of the international space programs collection at the
Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C.
"We've had a woman commander, woman pilot. We've had an all-woman
crew that just occurred out of coincidence because it just so
happened that they were assembled for their skills. I think the
United States is leading the way."

It took 20 years after Tereshkova's launch for Sally Ride to
become the first American woman in space, but since that time,
more than 40 women have flown to orbit as NASA astronauts.

"NASA took [Tereshkova's flight] to heart, everyone took it to
heart, that in order to sustain a space program they were going
to have to make it not a program of high performance test pilots
and a few selected scientists," Lewis told SPACE.com. "They were
going to have to do it as a more practical, day-to-day career in
space."

It's an uphill battle for women cosmonauts today, ­­­­­Lewis
said. Of the 19 women that have trained as Russian or Soviet
spaceflyers in the last 50 years, three have flown. The last
launched to space in 1994.

"While the United States is working to integrate women into the
space program over the generations, the Soviet Union really
didn't do that," Lewis said. "They didn't make an effort to
integrate women in to the program, and it has really only been in
the last year that Russia has changed their recruiting
requirements for cosmonauts." The new recruitment requirements
are similar to those set forth by NASA and do not have
gender-specific criteria, Lewis added.

One woman was accepted among the eight new cosmonauts selected
recently. Anna Yuryevna Kikina's acceptance bumps the number of
active female cosmonauts up to two.

2013 has been a big year for women in space. Ride — who succumbed
to pancreatic cancer on July 23, 2012 — will be awarded
a posthumous Medal of Freedom by President Barack Obama later
this year. China's space agency sent its second female
spaceflyer, Wang Yaping, to the nation's orbiting module earlier
this week, and NASA's Karen Nyberg is living onboard the
International Space Station today.